The platforms will design, implement and evaluate project activities and disseminate and communicate research findings. In this context, R4D platforms will operate where the supply of improved technologies meets the demand from farming communities to solve important constraints to sustainable intensification.

In the Ethiopian highlands context, these platforms are referred to as ‘innovation platforms’, as they build on existing experiences of the Nile Basin Development Challenge and other projects.

In each of the three regions, people are busy setting up and running these platforms, dealing with typical challenges of power dynamics, facilitation, incentives, participant turnover, and monitoring the effects of the platforms. This photo trip report from the Endamehoni site in Ethiopia shows some of the activities and results registered through working with innovation platforms.

Read more about the practice of innovation platforms In the Ethiopian highlands project:

In the West Africa project (and in Malawi), platforms were set up later and have not been documented as systematically.

Some perspectives

The 2014 program learning event in Tanzania put some emphasis on innovation platforms. It is likely that this interest will be sustained and perhaps even grow.

In the Ethiopian highlands, innovation platforms are connected with a wider national platform that the Humidtropics program aims to set up. In Mali and Ghana, these platforms should also help connect all the project teams better.

As the learning event revealed, the need to document the processes unfolding around these platforms has never been as crucial as it is now, so watch this space for more updates.